Running With Scissors.

I was dreading the New Year (typical
of a mortal to dread the inevitable!) You see, I wasn’t ready for change…I needed
things, life really, to stay the same just for a little while. But Change, much
like Rhett Butler, doesn’t give a damn…I am Scarlett O’Hara with nowhere to
go. It doesn’t end there…all this is subject to the domino effect, when one
falls; the rest follow suit. It must have started with that dreadful man
cleanse…well not really, but dreadful things often serve as the scapegoat until
we realise we are our own nemesis! Now comes in the analogy! See, my hairdresser
switched salons…and now I can’t find him. So I’ve been watching my hair slowly
and painfully deteriorate because I couldn’t stand anyone else touching it. To
join to this party, my face broke out to remind me what it was like being 13. I
guess the lisp wasn’t invited (falls to knees and profusely thanks all holy deities.)
And it doesn’t end there…because even though we don’t realise it, when we give
power to these little annoyances, they grow big heads (much like the disaster
on my face) and then they lash out. Lights, camera, and action: life decides
that you need some ACTUAL problems to go alongside the annoyances that somehow
morphed into a not-so-frivolous complex. THEN you pray desperately for change…because
you want to undo the change that robbed you of loved ones, of the peaceful
state of mind that you had fought all year to muster…to fight change with
change. And now I loathe my hair, I don’t want to hear how beautiful it is from
the envious eyes, or hear about how it has broken so drastically from the
candid ones. Must we keep things we no longer love…simply because we loved them at
some point?

Narcissus
was cursed to fall in love with himself because one rejected lover, amongst so
many, sought retribution from the goddess of vengeance. “If Narcissus ever
falls in love, don’t let the love be returned!” So he was led to a pool of
water, and when he looked into it, he fell in love with what he saw. And what he saw wasn’t real, so of course it
couldn’t love him back. But Narcissus
sat patiently, forever, hoping that one day that beautiful person in the bottom
of the pool was going to come out and love him. Because he never loved anyone, he fell in love with himself. That was Narcissus’ punishment.

My “I-just-had-a-cookie” face (both literally and metaphorically!)

Our existence is a
declaration of love, essentially. We are capable of giving it, receiving it and
that is how it is meant to be. But somewhere along the road of what is “meant
to be”, reality pushes its cold hand up your skirt and has its not-so-gentle
way with you. Loving other people can be fucked up, so there’s no surprise in
the realisation that loving oneself can be just as dramatic and probably more
fucked up. I don’t know how to love people because I love the idea before the
man. Similarly, I fight to love myself because the idea of who I could be is
lost in the seemingly endless ocean of my fuck ups and paradoxically, my fear
of falling IN love with myself and giving into the vane urges. But somewhere along this road I stumbled upon a
much needed cookie…to live is to love
yourself.

Nora Kirabo

I am a 25-year-old Ugandan blogger / lawyer / procrastinator / wine-enthusiast. The metaphorical “pot of gold” is an attempt to understand the heart and the mind but greatest of all to tear down the beliefs we have been taught to blindly follow especially those relating to image.